4-5-10 Washington Post: (GRAPHIC) Getting around-- The share of Washington area residents using public transportation remains about the same as in 2005, though more users say they're taking Metro less often than have increased their riding. Despite Metro's recent troubles, the main reason people stay away has little to do with safety or cost: It's a simple preference for driving.

4-2-10 Voice of America: Shuttle 'Discovery' to Launch Monday-- Delai adds it is important to study how the body struggles or adapts to life in orbit, in order to prepare for long-term missions in the future. He says one current study on tissue damage is being sponsored by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research near Washington. "Exposure to microgravity will cause the cells to react similar to the way a wound would act on the human body," Delai added.

3-24-10 Washington Post: (GRAPHIC) White Flint building up for the future-- On Tuesday, the Montgomery County Council approved a plan to transform the White Flint area along Rockville Pike from a disconnected series of low-rise buildings, strip malls and parking lots into a vibrant, grand boulevard lined with small villages where residents can live, shop, walk and play.

3-19-10 Washington Business Journal: U.S. Institute of Peace already in expansion mode-- The United States Institute of Peace is getting a chunk of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery campus in 2012.... The naval operations will relocate to a new facility in the region with the surgeons general of the Air Force and Army. The surgeons general are on the prowl for about 70,000 square feet; a spokeswoman from the office of the assistant secretary of defense health affairs said bids are in, but no decision has been made. There has been speculation among government workers and brokers that the three offices will be rolled into Tricare Management Activity's offices. Tricare, which handles health care for defense workers, has issued a request for proposals for 600,000 square feet of office space in Virginia. That decision is also pending.

In recent months, there have been reports of other construction delays at the new joint Army-Navy "Walter Reed National Medical Center", which is being built on the campus of the existing Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. In addition, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D.-Md.), whose district includes the Walter Reed campus, continues to lobby for funds to expand surrounding roadways, and fund a pedestrian tunnel across Route 355 to the NIH Metrorail station.

Chairman Edwards says he's confident that Walter Reed, and a new base medical facility at Fort Belvoir, will provide "world class care, cutting edge facilities unlike anything we've seen before. It appears that some of the construction challenges at Fort Belvoir are going to require some additional spending, in order to meet the deadline. I'm still not sure we've solved all the traffic problems that are going to be caused by the expansion at Bethesda and at Fort Belvoir."

Edwards also believes the lack of funding to provide for local traffic and other infrastructure improvements to deal with additional traffic resulting from BRAC-mandated facility changes is "a real fault of the current BRAC process. It does not take into account the need to invest in roads that are not directly located on a military site, but will be directly impacted by a DoD facility."

2-28-10 Washington Post: (GRAPHIC) A sense of place in the suburbs-- Some local jurisdictions hope that town center developments with a mix of office, residential and retail space will help them transform aging downtowns, reduce traffic congestion, provide new sources of tax revenue and create popular walkable communities. But success requires finding the right balance, overcoming traditional suburban attitudes and weathering the economic downtown.

2-25-10 TIME: The War Within-- What does it tell us that female soldiers deployed overseas stop drinking water after 7 p.m. to reduce the odds of being raped if they have to use the bathroom at night? Or that a soldier who was assaulted when she went out for a cigarette was afraid to report it for fear she would be demoted--for having gone out without her weapon? Or that, as Representative Jane Harman puts it, "a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire."

2-7-10 Washington Post: Racking up miles? Maybe not.-- Within a few years, a driver who pulls up to the gas pump may pay two bills with a single swipe of the credit card: one for the gas and the other for each mile driven since the last fill-up. That may be the result of what many transportation experts see as an inevitable revolution in the way Americans pay for their highways.